07 September 2017

Fake News Defined

George Rebane

Since I took some considerable issue with the LWV’s attempt to illuminate the nation’s travails with fake news (here), the definition of which never quite emerged from that conclave, I thought it proper to make my own contribution to the same. I believe that most people graced with critical thinking skills will more or less agree with the sequel. In any event, when I subsequently refer to ‘fake news’, it is in this light.

First, fake news falls into two broad categories – Insignificant and Misleading. News stories about topics that are totally irrelevant to a medium’s consumers, and placed there out of lack of editorial attention or to please some other desire to fill ‘space’ or fulfill an innocent obligation, even if completely true in fact and form (e.g. fluff pieces), falls into fake news simply because it is not the kind of news which the outlet purports to deliver and fulfill the expectations of its consumers.

Second, news stories which mislead, either intentionally or through poor journalism/editing (endemic these days), are also fake news. Purposive misleading by a seemingly legitimate news item can be accomplished in the several ways that satisfy the definition lying, how lies can be told, and therefore fully conform to that semantic taxonomy. I covered these variations some years back in ‘Lies and Lying’, and these are worth a revisit by anyone attempting to understand the present dissertation.

It is important to peel off certain types of communication which many people thoughtlessly group with fake news. Propaganda per se is not fake news if it hews to a truthful attempt to promote some agenda or conclusion. We recall that propaganda is “information, ideas, OR rumors deliberately spread widely to help or harm a person, group, movement, institution, nation, etc.” I have emphasized the ‘or’ to point out that this kind of purposive communication can also be totally legitimate, containing no false information or ideas, or even rumors that later turn out to be true. Propaganda only becomes fake news when it subsumes the nature and purpose of lying - to deceive and/or mislead.

We can equally eliminate the factual and opinionated denigration or celebration of individuals, organizations, or causes from the fake news category. Editorials and commentaries that are factually correct and unabashedly make their purpose clear to their consumer, are by any means neither fake nor news. (Satire is in its own category, and its absorption as fake news depends on the acumen of it consumer, and the known type of its source.)

In summary, when a previously consumed media piece, ostensibly presented as news, is known or subsequently discovered as having been ‘designed to deceive in the sense of being counterfeit or not real’, then we can reliably ascribe it to be fake news and communicate that conclusion to others. Else the more detailed considerations given above should come into play.

Comments

Propaganda considered fake news is predominantly, and correctly, attributed to misleading disinformation campaigns. Putting a spin on a story by perhaps leaving out some information and not telling the whole story, or conveying information that a given recipient does not personally like, is not fake news. Most of what Trump calls fake news falls into the category of information he does not like.

You don't have to look very hard. How many times has he referred to entire news organizations, CNN, New York Times, etc. as fake news? His blanket accusations mean that he thinks everything coming out of their collective 'mouths' is fake. The reality is they are merely not willing to be his cheerleaders and blow smoke up his ass like some broadcasters will.
Are news outlets capable of spinning information this way or that? Sure. But that does not mean it is all fake. Of course, some stuff goes out that is just plain wrong. Deliberate?

For George Boardman: I have a few examples of fake news from CNN
1. Hands up don't shoot in reference to Michael Brown. Obama's Justice Department said that never happened but CNN pushed the story anyway
2. Rape and domestic violence were pre-existing conditions under the American Healthcare Act. False.
3. Sherelle Smith (sister of Sylville Smith) Calling for Peace. Really? Through creative editing CNN left out what she really said. "Stop burning shit we need in our community. Take that shit to the suburbs. Burn they shit down. We need our shit."

MaryW 324pm - Thank you Ms Wanna, but I was hoping for something more specific, because I have not heard the president identify everything coming from those outlets as fake news. However, he has singled out specific reports, and accused them of therefore being fake news outlets. Your citing one of those media reports would help a lot.

Let's also not forget the "handshake" incident in Poland, or the Trump is mobilizing 100,000 national guards to roundup illegal immigrants, or the Rosenstein threatened to resign, or the Comey requested additional resources for Russia investigation prompting his firing. All false. All fake. All reported by AP or CNN.

Russian "peegate" is a prime example. All that fake news got a "Trumped up" investigation started. ( which has yet to go anywhere)

Now how far do you want to take this? Who forgets Dan Rather? and HIS forged doc.s on Bush? Fake news deluxe.

LIB media being just another tentacle of the DNC. There is nothing "fake" about that.
Take what LIB media says (or doesn't say) about Trump ending DACA. You have all these LIBs file suit claiming what Trump did as "unconstitutional". I have yet to see LIB news call them on it. What "O" did was unconstitutional, by enacting DACA with a stroke of a pen.

GeorgeR no problem on the polls. However they were cited by many as "fake news" throughout the last campaign and it turned out to be so.

Mybe GeorgeB can read the underlying criteria regarding the weight of partys to see how fake they are from the beginning. We call them "push-pull" and they have been used right here in our little county.

Also it seems to me the use of anonymous sources in many of this years "gotcha" articles are fake news as well.

ToddJ 411pm - Thanks Todd. I tend to agree with you on publishing damaging 'news reports' when the cited source is anonymous. If a news organization can't put the copy together with a legitimate name, then don't publish until you can do so. If the item concerns a potential criminal act or intent, then the journalist should report it to the appropriate law enforcement agency and let them attempt to ferret it out. Anybody with a horn can blast literally anything out there claiming an anonymous source highly placed in this agency or that.

DonB 415pm - Good pick-up Don. Regarding all the citing of real fake news that has been anti-Trump and anti-Repub, I'm beginning to hear a lot of crickets from our progressive neighbors. Have they nothing to add to how the conservatives floated fake news out there to injure Dems?

Not true Todd about the polls being fake news. RCP consensus had Hillary by 3.2 and that's about the way it came out. Clinton was 3.2 ended up Clinton 2.1. Remarkably accurate. What is fake news is that Trump actually won the popular vote and the 3 million plus edge to Clinton was because of voter fraud, something that has not in any way been proven. Now that's fake news.

The po' ol' fakenewsman forgets that the spin is the fake news like his daily worse rating ever!! Wasn't the President to have quit months ago fakenwsman? Its like your representation of the latest, you play the - XX game when the simple story is Trump is at 45% approval like election day. ;-)

PaulE 441pm - I think you're confusing media outlets with individuals' statements. The latter cannot be labeled fake news no matter how erroneous such statements are; they are simply lies if they are told with the INTENT to deceive. Otherwise such statements from individuals are just smoke blown out of their asses. However, there is a definite tendency today to dilute meaning by starting to call every conceivable thing by a simplistic, no-brainer, but evocative label. 'Nazi', 'racist', 'white supremacist', ... come to mind. Let's try to be a bit more rigorous in these pages if we can, else we will declare that such feats are beyond us.

Walt 503pm - Now the sfgate story is definitely not fake news, since it is a report of what case a specific person seeks to make in a cited publication. We may not agree with Coates conclusions, but since he is neither a news outlet nor claims to be such, there is no fake news involved here. Rigor gentlemen, else we also will come off sounding like the lamentable liberal lackeys of the land.

Hey George I agree with you trumps statement that Hillary's vote advantage was due to voter fraud is his personal opinion not something that came out of a news outlet At that point I can comment that his opinion is bullshit and without substance

So folks how would AP using the term "undocumented citizens" today to refer to the so called dreamers fit in the mix? The same day we are told by the former head of immigration investigations under 0 that apx 50% of dreamers were fraudulent applications. ;-)

If you want to talk about fake news, you should start with the decades long campaign to discredit climate change science. That is fake news brought to you by the fossil fuel industry. No where else in the world is the public more divided that America. Why? Fake news and propaganda that has been gobbled up by the likes of RR readers hook, line, and sinker. Houston has had 1,000 year storms two years in a row. The largest single rain event and hurricane on record both occurring (now) two weeks apart. Of course, you all will come up with the usual pile of BS excuses for why climate science is wrong…once again brought to you by the fossil fuel industry. Open your eyes, if not for yourselves, for your grandchildren. This goes way beyond ideological differences in the efficacy of capitalism.

You have it backward RobertC. The climate change hoax is fake news. It started out as "cooling" then became global warming then climate disruption blamed on manmade gas. Now Climate change. So yes, the issue is totally fake news as proven by the East Anglia and NOAA manipulations of the facts.

Yaaaa.... " worst on record." And just how long have those records been kept? ( not bloody long,, in the scope of things) Great excuse. My Great Grand Dad was around before the concept of wind speed calculation was invented.
Nice try Cross.
What did the indigenous people do to figure it out Bobby? count the deer flying by?
The number of sharks in the water spout?

Mary Wanna...only those who've been around and paid attention will notice "fake news." That's why I've noticed that when I've listened to what a politician (not of the chosen party) actually said....the news media reported their interpretation of what he said. Not what I heard. How do ya explain that?

DonB 605pm - 'Undocumented citizen' is a simple bullshit label for an illegal alien foisted by a leftwing outlet. It becomes fake news if the outlet states or implies (See 'Lies and Lying') that this is a formal label describing someone residing in the US. Its intent is simple - attempt to convince the feather heads that such individuals are 'just like the rest of us' having simply lost or misplaced their legalizing documents.

RobertC 629pm - So Mr Cross, what about all those scientists and engineers who are not in the pay or thrall of the fossil fuel industry, and still discredit the IPCC results as interpreted by the politically motivated and handsomely rewarded? I would posit that the Hansens, Manns, and Mahlmans have made more money from government payouts than anyone in the pay of fossil fuel companies. And critical scientists and engineers like me have made no money from them. Any of us would love to discuss the matter with those preventable man-made global warming promoters in a public forum. However, that is not possible for obvious reasons.

And if you really want to hear of the fake news of the century, it is the news organizations reporting that the 1,000+ 'scientists' who contributed peripheral studies to the IPCC report all agree with its politically interpreted conclusions - they don't. Most of them are honest enough to admit that they do not have the expertise in the other areas of science and engineering to verify the overarching conclusions that IPCC's promoters purvey. Every component of that report is and has been open to material peer reviewed criticisms which have not been answered save by ad hominem attacks and innuendos.

As Einstein pointed out, it doesn't take legions of scientists to disprove any theory of science - just one will do quite nicely. And today those 'ones' abound for every facet of the global warming hysteria, from data gathering, through the intervening physics, to the interpretation of the general circulation model(s) outputs.

SIEGEL: Does climate change have anything to do either with the intensity of the storms or the frequency of the storms as we're experiencing them this season?

KLOTZBACH: You know, I mean, the Atlantic, actually we've had - the last two years have generally been below normal for hurricane activity. And actually, Septembers of 2013, '14, '15 and '16 were all very, very quiet. Obviously, this is a far cry from that. It's been an incredibly active last few weeks. Historically, September is the most active month of the season. When it comes to climate change's impacts on the storm - so most the theoretical models really don't see any change in the frequency, perhaps even going down a little bit. They say maybe the storms will get slightly more intense. But I typically look at the observations. I don't do much theoretical modeling. And in the observations, it's just really too hard to say.

To summarize... ummm.... he's ummm.... not gonna say no but it really is too hard to say. But of course, the blithering idiots have no problem confusing weather with climate when it fits their narrative.

A Method of Google Search Bias Quantification and Its Application in Climate Debate and General Political Discourse

Abstract

The percentage of domain traffic, referred by Google Search, net of brand searches (PGSTN), tends to be in or around the range 25%-30% for a broad class of web domains. This hypothesis is tested by calculating the correlation between the popularity of news/opinions websites and their PGSTN, and finding it to be near zero. Thus, PGSTN can be used rigorously to detect and even quantify Google Search intentional bias. Intentional bias is the bias that has been introduced by internal Google decisions, and unrelated to external factors, such as the dominance of particular viewpoints on the web. Here, the PGSTN method is applied for intentional bias detection about climate debate and in general political discourse.

Google Search is found to be extremely biased in favor of climate alarmism and against climate realism. The PGSTN ranges for climate realism and climate alarmism do not even overlap! Some of the most important climate realist domains, including low-controversial judithcurry.com, have such a low PGSTN that they can be considered blacklisted by Google.

Google Search is found to be biased in favor of left/liberal domains and against conservative domains with a confidence of 95%. Further, certain hard-Left domains have such a high PGSTN that their standing raises suspicions that they have been hand-picked for prominent placement. Certain respected conservative domains are blacklisted.

Russ 1027am - Thanks Russ. Google is now a fully-dyed corporatist entity, and, of course, leans toward the political side that has historically strongly promoted a big government that makes corporatism such a profitable endeavor. They are firmly in the Dems' corner and will stay there as long as leviathan has the ability to conduct pay-for-play. Their slogan "Do no evil" is now pure unvarnished horseshit broadcast for feather-head consumption. And the Dems play their part by advising everyone not to look behind the curtain and keep their eye on the Rupubs, that, as everyone knows, is the party of business interests, not stopping to think 'then why are they the party of small government?' Here's more -http://www.businessinsider.com/when-google-said-dont-be-evil-this-is-what-it-meant-2011-8

The definition of fakenews as presented is a rather tight space to navigate through. Bias news is what is prevalent. The tone, the nuance of words used reporting a story (Clinton campaign surrogate vs. Trump operative) reveals the bias. Yet, there is another aspect to fakenews that has jumped from the editorial pages smack dap into the front page news stories. Gregory once wrote something that is most appros in dealing with our brethren from another mindset: Correlation does not imply causation. Or, correlation does not equate to causation.

I see the correlation equating causation often nowadays in the reporting of one event, tying it to another (un)related event, then taking the blind leap of faith to connect the dots and drawing a conclusion.
The Russians in the Russian Embassy cheered when Trump won on Nov. 9, 2016, proof that Trump colluded with THE RUSSIANS! to snatch the win out of Hillary claws and steal the election for Trump. Thus, Trump is an illegitimate POTUS. Another example is the clip I saw of Rachel Madcow on MSNBC getting her gotcha her juices flowing announcing she had Trump's tax returns in her hot little hands. When it dawned on her and the audience that Tax Forms 1040 are just the bottom line figures with no scandalous details or foreign names, or companies, she immediately pivoted to the smoking gun evidence of Trump and Putin's evil sinister conspiracy handshake is in those darn tax returns....but Trump won't release them.

Exxon is an evil oil company. Putin is an cold blooded murdering sumabitch. T Rex runs Exxon. Trump hires T Rex as Sec of State. Trump and Putin are plotting to take over all the oil and gas in the world via Exxon.

BillT 406pm - Correctamundo Mr Tozer, it is the politically biased news (viz fake news) that is most prevalent from the media, both Right and Left. According to my lights, that's acceptable as long as the audience understands the way which the broadcaster is leaning. The claims of being 'unbiased' made by some outlets have a distinct odor to them. It's the nebbishes who consume news, thinking they have discovered an unbiased source who are misled the most.

For the po' ol' fakenewsmans Russian dressing file; The NBC report that said the notes on Don Jr's meeting with the Russian lawyer talked about donations has been disproved. The actual notes contain no such reference and are not seen as damaging for the President his family or the campaign according to multiple sources in congress who have reviewed the file according to politico.

I see folks turning to OAN for a quick 'unbiased' news read. Not in depth on-line, can't say about OAN TV. I like it better than Yahoo News or Goggle News for just the facts, ma'am.
I remember well on Election Night when Idaho, Utah, and other Western were not called, but WI, MI, Ohio, Kansas, the Midwest, Plain states, and most Rocky Mt states were called, Google News only had one election story about a close Senate race.....6 hours old and some pre-election day stories about projected turnout in some state. Yahoo was still on Florida. Guess they were too busy passing out smelling salts to execute their job descriptions.